Here are the key takeaways from Samsung’s earnings report and conference call:

Samsung has another new high-end smartphone coming

Facing heightened competition in the second half of the year, Samsung will go back to a tried-and-true playbook: staging a global launch for a new high-end smartphone. During its earnings call with investors on Thursday, CLSA analyst Matt Evans pushed Samsung management on several fleeting remarks it had made earlier about a second major smartphone launch scheduled for the latter half of the year (the first being Samsung’s now-annual refresh of its Galaxy Note smartphone-tablet hybrid, which typically takes place in the fall).

Kim Hyun-joon, a senior vice president at Samsung’s mobile communications business, seemed to confirm the idea, saying that the new smartphone would be launched globally and feature “new materials,” though he didn’t go into detail on either point.

It’s unclear whether a new device, boasting different materials or a new form factor, will move the needle for Samsung. The company said repeatedly Thursday that it is investing in flexible devices. Last year, Samsung released the curved-screen Galaxy Round — but that was a niche product, valued more for its ability to showcase a new technology than to drive sales.

Value investors still waiting for shareholder returns

In recent months, long-term investors have piled into Samsung shares, anticipating an increase in the company’s paltry dividend yield, which lags those of its peers. They will have to be patient.

Robert Yi, the company’s head of investor relations, said that the company hadn’t finalized its longer-term dividend plans, adding that it would hold the interim dividend at 500 Korean won ($0.49) per share for the time being.

That didn’t sit well with S.C. Bae, an analyst with Barclays Capital, who said the dividend was “below the expectations of investors.”

Yi said, however, that Samsung’s shareholder return policy had to be considered together with the need for capital expenditures to fuel medium and long-term growth.

“We are being very careful,” he said, adding: “We would like to ask shareholders for a bit more time.”

Samsung’s China strategy is still a work in progress

In the fight for emerging world smartphone sales, Samsung’s chief rivals are virtually all Chinese: Lenovo Group, Huawei, ZTE, Xiaomi and Oppo Electronics, to name a few.

And in these companies’ home market, Samsung’s historic lead is under heavy assault. Samsung’s struggle has been compounded by some of Samsung’s own missteps — as Samsung admitted in its earnings report, the company is bloated with too many unsold 3G devices there, at a time when Chinese consumers are eagerly awaiting the arrival of 4G LTE products.

On the conference call Thursday, Kim of Samsung’s mobile communications business acknowledged these problems, but said that the company would focus on a smaller number of “strategic models” that boast some of the features of its high-end phones while competing on price with low- and mid-end local rivals. In particular, Kim said that large-screen phones would be key to the company’s approach.

It will be a difficult tight rope to walk, as Bank of America-Merrill Lynch analyst Simon Woo pointed out. But Kim of Samsung said that the company still has room to save on research and development and supply chain management costs.

The foreign-exchange picture will improve, but the next few earnings reports likely won’t look much better

One thing to keep in mind is that South Korea’s surging currency, the won, had a pretty big impact on sales and profits, with the company chalking up the damage to its operating profit at about 500 billion won ($487 million) — a hurdle that Apple and Chinese competitors don’t have to contend with.

With the won appearing to have cooled its surge in recent weeks amid talks of an interest rate cut in South Korea, that could provide some reprieve for Samsung in the next few quarters.

But don’t get too comfortable. Yi, the head of Samsung investor relations, warned on the call that — in spite of earlier optimism in its profit warning earlier this month — the company’s prospects aren’t likely to get dramatically better soon.

In fact, Yi said on the conference call Thursday morning that the company may not be able to improve its third-quarter earnings for its mobile division. He also noted that, for the rest of the year, in spite of the company’s best efforts, due to intense product competition, investors would have to “wait and see” how profitability fares.